Bicycle

Last week while in Santa Cruz for the Caletti Open House, I got to take a quick ride at UCSC before heading over to John’s shop. At the top of U-Con by the kiosk before entering Rock and Roll, I got to talking with a bunch of guys. They took interest in the bike that … Read more

Handlebar upsweep isn’t a thing. It never has been. Notice that this will be the last paragraph where that term will be written in this article. Don’t say it. Don’t repeat it. It’s an old punchline to a joke nobody remembers. It’s been a few years since I’ve discussed handlebars in general. It’s time again. … Read more

I’ve  been tuning the fork on my 2022 MiG-31 Firefox. It’s a RockShox Pike Ultimate RC2 150/42 B4. Nothing fancy in terms of tune at this point but sorting the spring side for now. It’s such a nice little fork. I’m 218 pounds and riding on gnar Marin singletrack with this hardtail. I’ve been tuning … Read more

I got lucky. Really lucky. Less than a second later and I would have been tumbling head first down a 15 foot chute of chunk. It would have been very bad, possibly deadly. The 3D printed stem on my 2022 PVD MiG-31 Firefox  broke catastrophically on my third ride. This is the second catastrophic failure … Read more

Just about two years ago, the world changed. I got my hands on the (then) new OneUp 210mm dropper post. It was exactly what we had been waiting for and I put it right to use. Prior to that, we were on 185mm dropper posts, a 25mm increase. In the time since, all of my … Read more

It goes MACH 6 and is ‘invisible’. This insane interceptor fighter is thought-guided and controlled. The Firefox MiG-31. You need to ‘think in Russian’ to get this jet to do it’s job. In the past year and a half, I’ve invested a huge amount of time and resources developing an update to my state of … Read more

I hadn’t been to the Philadelphia Bicycle Exposition until this year. It was long overdue for me to attend as it is a very east coast event and I’m an east coast (originally) guy. Plus, folks have always said great things about the event. Unlike NAHBS (North American Handmade Bicycle Show) which moves from one … Read more

This was a nice gift that showed up last week. I was talking with Josh Ogle on the phone last week, I can’t remember what started this, I think that I called him about center lock threading. I was talking to him about some nerdy detail for modeling and engineering threads using equation driven formula … Read more

Red rubber baby buggy bumpers bounce. Red rubber baby buggy bumpers bounce. Red rubber baby buggy bumpers bounce. In the past 5 years, I’ve been doing a lot of work with rigid forks on bikes. From klunkers to hybrids, there has been so many layers of the onion that have been pulled back within the … Read more

The last pieces to the TIE Advanced puzzle have come into place. Largely, the use of a much larger front tire. Just as moving the front tire of the klunker to 29×3.0 was completely transformative, it has been on the TIE. Of course, I knew this to be the case. This is how bikes work. … Read more

Construction of the TIE Advanced X1 (Released early July) was turning a bit frantic and wild near the end. Every build that I do seems to have new features and complexities that involve even more new tools and solutions that compound production and suck up much more time than a simple redesign shown on paper. … Read more

Our buddy Ben Land is back with some intel. Ben was working with me to get the Skynet Frame Fixture sorted out and proven. Since, he’s done a few more bikes and his work has improved significantly. Still, like me, Ben actually rides bikes. This means that shit breaks. In this case, he blew up … Read more

Now that the TIE Advanced X1 is out in the wild, it needed a proper test and in a way that I prefer to not, a long long suffer fest where it could be measured for performance. This bike is designed to be pedaled very hard and cover a lot of ground. Philip Norman is … Read more

It’s been 2 1/2 years since the PVD T-47 Airspeeder shifted my understanding of what a narrow gauge bike could do. That bike is still well ahead of what anyone else is doing but I’d found it’s limitations and ways to improve it. During COVID, most of my riding has been on my all-road bike … Read more

“Skynet IS the virus.” – John Connor Just over a month ago, the SKYNET chassis fixture project was announced. An open source bicycle chassis fixture that exceeds in capability over anything that can be purchased. It would be based on the PVD Cyberdyne System fixture but significantly more accessible and affordable. Since then the design … Read more

I have a feeling that there’s going to be some discussion about math on the internets very soon so I’m going to start with something fun and maybe useful for a lot of people in the current era. I was on a ride yesterday where so many of my ideas come from. I was thinking … Read more

Most steel tubing sold by the major brands is truly terrible for modern bicycles. The tubes were largely specified back in the 1970s for hobby builders to replicate road racing bikes. I’ve been asking tube suppliers for years for better tubes to select from. I’ve generally been ignored. Years have gone by like this. Back … Read more

I’ve been so busy over the past year and a half. I’ve done and incredible amount of work on my designs and tooling but still don’t have a finished bike to show for it. New fixtures, new designs, new everything. The new normal is ‘new’. In the background recently are projects that are large in … Read more

Last March, early in the COVID-19 lockdown, I set out to design and build a new frame fixture for myself. This was need-based on many levels. I wanted something amazing. Something better than anything I could buy. A fixture for a new way of doing things. The result was the PVD Cyberdyne System. I still … Read more

Bicycle framebuilding is a particular simple craft. Connect a few bits of material together and strap some wheels to it. What makes good framebuilding difficult is everything that happens around the build. One of the harder issues to get up to speed on when making bicycle frames on a small scale is the lack of … Read more

I live in a world divided into small fractions of a millimeter. Often, I spend a great deal of time freeing up just 1/2 of one and feel like a conquering hero. It is my struggle. I was recently sourcing some forks for the all-road bikes that we are about to do. It had been … Read more